


Love is Just a Bloodsport

by bending_sickle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 18:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2078046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bending_sickle/pseuds/bending_sickle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate has second thoughts about killing Derek. (pre Season 1)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love is Just a Bloodsport

**Author's Note:**

> 
>     This is the in-between, the waiting that happens in the
>         space between
>     one note and the next, the place where you confuse
>                                                     his hands with the room, the dog
>           with the man, the blood
>                                                                with the ripped-up sky.
> 
> \- Richard Siken, The Dislocated Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 
>     This is the in-between, the waiting that happens in the
>         space between
>     one note and the next, the place where you confuse
>                                                     his hands with the room, the dog
>           with the man, the blood
>                                                                with the ripped-up sky.
> 
> \- Richard Siken, The Dislocated Room

Kate wasn’t sure, at first. Short of seeing one turn or heal, there was no sure way of knowing whether someone was a werewolf or not. Wolfsbane worked as a preliminary test, but as her brother would never cease reminding her, a flinch or cough wasn’t hard evidence. 

She had done her homework, knew the boy was part of the pack, but nothing more. She wouldn’t put her hand in the fire and swear the boy was a wolf. Not yet. But she was working on it.

The seduction was pitifully easy. Teenage boys and hormones were little rockets just waiting to go off, and Kate always loved to play with fire. She just had to crook a finger, shoot a smile, and Derek was hooked, blood hot and body aching for her. A few choice words, circumstantial truths with unspoken parentheses, like _I love being with you (you’re such fun to toy with)_ and _I’ve never felt this way before (the thrill of the con is intoxicating)_ , words that won’t make her heartbeat trip and betray her.

She got him to talk almost as fast as she got him to come, teasing out stories of his life with her hands, her legs, her teeth and tongue and lips. He told her stories, told her dreams, told her wishes and fantasies and _when I graduate, let’s…_ She forgot those as soon as they were said, leaving them in the bed (or behind the bleachers, or in the backseat of her car) along with the boy. But when he told her names and places and habits, she remembered every word.

It was fun. It was spy work and it was conning and it was sex with a beautiful boy. Jotting down shorthand notes in her journal - habitual routes and floor plans and _my uncle said_ … - Kate would wonder if maybe she had enough, if she should go on to phase two and get her hands dirty with something that wasn’t sweaty teenage skin. 

Sometimes Chris would look at her across the dinner table and Kate would wonder if she should just stop altogether. He was always going on about the Code, always reading the _Bestiary_ , and reciting that damned French line, mangling the words but throwing them at Kate just the same. He would throw other words at her, what ifs and morality questions that muddied waters that should have been simple and clear and obvious. 

Kate didn’t want to think like that, didn’t want to look down and see herself standing in black waters, toes in the mud. She knew what she was doing, knew it with the certainty and clarity of a soldier. A hunter.

But she was having so much fun. She loved the challenge, the delicate art of interrogating with the dip of her hips and twirl of her tongue, lying through her teeth while only saying the truth. She loved pulling Derek apart, stripping him down layer by layer, having him break in her arms so she could put him back together just the way she wanted, with the right word and touch and promise. It was like mining for gold - there was always something more, some other bright shiny secret to dig up, another piece of the boy to take and write down into her journal.

She also loved his body, how responsive it was, how easily taught - _trained_ \- it was, and how eager he was to please. She loved how it wasn’t the lean hardness of teenaged muscles stretched over bone, but the solid thickness of a man. Or a young werewolf. 

Because now she knew for sure. She should add that to the _Bestiary_ , how born werewolves bloomed into wolfhood in their teenage years. How bruises and bite-marks on his skin healed faster each day until one night she bit and sucked and scratched and the colours faded right under her hands. How she was the one with the bruises now because Derek literally did not know his own strength. How she could feel the growl in his chest echoing in her ribs. How he would turn his head and freeze mid-kiss or mid-thrust, dipping his head into the the side of her throat as he tried to control the shift. 

When Derek says he loves her, that he’d die for her, she can’t help but laugh and think, “ _Because of me_ , you’ll die _because_ of me,” and suddenly she stops laughing.

That night, lying in her bed but unshowered, leafing through her journal, she decides it is time for step two.


	2. A Banquet of Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a fire in Beacon Hills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 
>     They’re hurling their bodies down the freeway
>                                              to the smell of gasoline,
>     which is the sound of a voice saying I told you so.
>                                                             _Yes you did, dear._
> 
> \- Richard Siken, Driving, Not Washing

Derek gets called to the principal’s office in the middle of history. It’s the last class of the day so he grabs his backpack, stuffing the textbook in it as he walks down the hall. He grinds his teeth, wondering if Terry ratted him out, if this is about yesterday at lunch, when he shoved Terry hard against the lockers before he reined his wolf in. Or maybe it was Michelle with her hand slipping in around his thigh under the desk, and how he squeezed her wrist so hard it bruised almost instantly and he had to bolt to the bathroom before his fangs surfaced.

He’s getting better at handling the wolf that’s woken up in his chest but he still loses control sometimes. It’s easier at home, where he can let slip a flash of fang or fur without fearing for his life, where instead he’ll get a steadying hand on his shoulder and a _breathe through it, find you anchor._

It’s not so hard with Kate, either. With her, they’re in the dark, her eyes are closed, his face is in her shoulder, and if his face shifts or his nails dig a little too deep into her skin, neither of them notice. She steadies him, steadies the wolf, and when he kisses her, his Alpha’s voice ringing in his ears - _breathe it out_ \- kisses her shoulder, her neck, her breasts, he thinks about anchors and oceans and drowning.

But at school it’s a constant battle for control. The incessant chaos whirling around him - all the noises, smells, movements - overwhelm him and leave him reeling, slouched in chairs, leaning against lockers or crouched over the bathroom sink. It’s like he’s six all over again, first day at school and screaming because _it’s too much_. Only now instead of screaming he’s pushing back, he’s hurting people, and the wolf is taking the reins before he even knows what’s what.

Because while he’s always been a werewolf, now that he’s blooming the wolf has stirred, has started stretching inside his chest and clawing out of him, nails curving and teeth lengthening. Now he understands why Laura was on a hair-trigger when she went through it, running off into the woods for stillness and quiet. Were-puberty is a _bitch._

So he doesn’t know why he’s been called into the principal’s office, but he knows it’s not going to be just him and the principal. He knocks once and steps in, expecting an accusatory face waiting for him in one of the chairs, but what he sees instead is Kate. His stomach drops. Words like _statutory rape_ and _corruption of a minor_ squeeze the air out of his lungs. His fangs bite at the corners of his mouth.

He turns around - _too fast, slow down_ \- and closes the door carefully, inch by inch, eyes on his hands and his nails and _stay human, stay anchored, stay, stay, stay calm._ He lets go of the doorknob and his hands stay human. He turns back to face the office and his teeth are blunt. 

The principal gestures for him to sit in the chair beside Kate and when he does, she leans over and puts her hand on his shoulder. He almost flinches, eyes glued to the principal in front of him, waiting for the frown. 

Kate squeezes his shoulder and says, “Hey, cousin.” The blip in her heartbeat grounds Derek more than her touch does. He’s never heard her lie before.

She lies through the rest of the meeting. 

Sitting in her car fifteen minutes later, Kate turns to him and grins. “Not a bad story, huh?” She means the doctor’s appointment she’s supposed to be taking him to and the family crisis that meant no one else but Derek’s cousin was available to take him. She laughs and tells him what she thinks of his school ( _godawful colour scheme_ ) and his principal ( _pretty thick_ ) and Derek just closes his eyes and listens to her steady heartbeat until they’re out of the parking lot.

"It’s a lot of trouble to go through for a booty call," he says, because he still doesn’t know what Kate is doing here.

She glances at him, her face suddenly serious. “It certainly is,” she murmurs, and though her heart stays true Derek knows she means something else entirely. Kate checks her watch and coaxes speed out of her car. Derek watches her and doesn’t say anything else.

The first ambulance passes them five minutes later. Kate pulls to the shoulder and watches it get larger in the rearview mirror. She waits until the ambulance takes a right two blocks ahead before pulling the car back into traffic. The second ambulance races up ten minutes after that, wailing down a parallel street in the opposite direction. Kate grips the steering wheel harder and steps on the accelerator.

By then, Derek can smell the smoke. He twists in his seat and looks out the window, but the sky he sees is clear. Then Kate takes a right and he sees it, a black cloud rising up through the trees on the edge of town, and with a lurch Derek realizes where the fire is.

"Kate," he whispers.

"I know."

Derek’s eyes are glued to the sky. “ _Kate._ ”

The needle on the speedometer twitches to the right and they bullet down the street.

"My house is on fire." He says the words even though they don’t make sense.

"I know," repeats Kate, and this time Derek hears her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from a Robert Louis Stevenson quote.


	3. Sweet’s the Air with Curly Smoke (From All My Burning Bridges)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate takes Derek away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 
>     Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from kingdom
>           to kingdom through the wilderness,
>                        where you learn things, where you’re left to your own devices.
>     Henry’s driving,
>           and Theodore’s bleeding into the upholstery.
> 
> \- Richard Siken, _Driving, Not Washing_

Derek woke up groggy, head pounding and heavy. A touch of air wafted over his face, smelling of gasoline and cheap coffee and asphalt. The smells and a bitter taste in his mouth made his stomach roil. He swallowed hard and opened his eyes, squinting at the light. His eyes burned and he felt a tickling cough start in the back of his throat. He felt like he’d been put through a blender.

When his eyes stopped watering, they confirmed what his nose had told him. He was sitting alone in Kate’s car at a gas station, one he didn’t recognize. He probably wasn’t anywhere near Beacon Hills anymore. The sun was low in the horizon, so they’d probably been driving for four or five hours, which meant they could be _anywhere._

Derek swiveled in his seat, fighting the nausea that instantly took hold of him, and glanced around. He couldn’t see any signs but the country side was desert, drier and sparser than anything near home. Maybe he was in Nevada? Arizona?

His memories were hazy and fragmented and old. He caught bits and pieces of the morning - the smell of grass on lacrosse field, the snap of a pencil in his hands - and the afternoon was even harder to pin down. He remembered Kate, remembered a wailing siren, and panic punching him in the chest.

Derek closed his eyes tight and took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. That proved a mistake, though, because his throat clamped down and it felt like something sharp slipped down into his lungs, forcing him to double over and cough until his throat felt raw. 

Bent over his knees, taking short wheezing breaths, seatbelt digging into his chest with each inhale, Derek caught the scent something acrid and burnt. The smell permeated everything, from the seat upholstry to Derek’s clothes, the whole car swathed in it. When Derek turned his head he saw the car’s cigarette lighter stuffed to the brim with curling black petals and limp purple ones.

The echo of Kate’s voice whispered in his ear. "Sit tight, puppy." Derek whined, nausea surging again, so he buried his face against his knees. Her words came back to him, the pounding needles of a headache. He pressed his nose into denim and searched for traces of wood smoke in the wolfsbane. "There’ll be nothing left when you wake up." 

The door to his left opened and Kate’s scent filled the car, fighting with the wolfsbane for dominance, spice and musk and human female, coffee and gasoline mixing in with bitterness and ash, cloying sweetness and fresh leaves. The slam of the door made him flinch - the pain in his head peaking, his ears buzzing. Over his laboured breathing he heard her slip her coffee cup into the holder, snap her seatbelt into place and slide the keys into the ignition. 

He wanted to move, was going to move, but everything hurt and he felt sick and if he moved he might scream because there was wolfsbane in Kate’s car and something was really really wrong, something more than what was happening right there, with him, with her. Something to do with smoke and fire and any moment now he was going to remember.

Kate squeezed his shoulder and pulled him back up, pressed him into the backrest. He felt her hand cup his cheek, his jaw, move his head towards her, so he opened his eyes. Her mouth made a moue.

"Not looking so hot, puppy," she said, as her fingers slipped to the side of his neck, feeling his pulse. Derek felt his fang dig into his lips and saw hers curve into a smile. “But good enough.”

Then her hand let go, turned the key and pressed a knob, and the wolfsbane was filling the car again, blotting out all scent of Kate and the memory woodsmoke. Derek slumped in the seat as unconsciousness took him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from “Sanctuary” by Dorothy Parker.


	4. The Smell of Something Burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's too late to turn around now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 
>     Someone had a party while you were sleeping but you weren’t really sleeping, you were sick, and parts of you were burning, and you couldn’t move.
> 
> \- Richard Siken, _You Are Jeff, #22_

When Derek woke up the sun had set and Kate was listening to the radio, some bouncy cheerful thing with a tinny beat. He could feel air rushing in from her side, the window probably rolled all the way down. Derek took a careful shallow breath and picked up only the faintest trace of wolfsbane, clinging only to their clothes and the car upholstery. 

His head had slumped to the side, resting low against the window and away from the cigarette burner. He cracked one eye open, trying to keep his body still and his breathing sleep-steady, and looked out at the countryside.

They were speeding down a highway. It was dark, the moon barely a sliver of a waxing crescent, but he could see the flat landscape and the scraggly bushes and thought, , _We’re in a desert._ He had no idea where home was.

As the soporific effects of the wolfsbane wore off - along with the headache, the nausea, the dryness in his throat all the way to his lungs - his memory started falling back into place, clicking tightly in his head like bullets in a clip.

_"My house is on fire."_

_"I know."_

Click.

_"Turn the car around, Kate! We have to go! I have to go -"_

_"It’s too late."_

Click.

_"Please, stop, let me out. I can run. Please just let me out."_

_"Not gonna happen."_

Click.

_The car racing down the street, him fumbling with the seat belt and the door, wondering how best to throw himself out. The smell of woodsmoke overwhelmed by perfume, by crushed petals then by burnt petals, and Kate pulling him back._

Click.

Where memory failed him, imagination took over. The smoke cloud huge and black and heavy hanging over everyone he knows. The flames bright and hot and hungry, wrapping themselves around doorways and bed frames. Screams and howls and ashes.

Derek stared at the moon hanging over the unfamiliar landscape that kept rushing past and tried to stop thinking, stop imagining, stop remembering.

When that failed, he clung to the realization that Laura was at school. He was in a car screaming to get out but she was at school when their house burned. She would be safe. Unburnt. Alive. He just had to get back to Laura. 

So he thought about his sister and stared at the moon and tried to smell something other than smoke. 

Derek jerked awake and he was alone in the car again. They were parked in front of a motel, the neon light in the office window declaring it the _Silver Motel._ Of course it was.

He rubbed his face and pinched his brow. He almost felt clearheaded, but realized that even without the wolfsbane burning, just being in the car with the residue clinging to everything - his hair, his skin, his clothes, the very air no matter how long the window had been open - was stopping him from shaking its effects off completely. 

He had to get out. Suddenly he just had to get out.

Derek swung the door open and leaned out, remembering at the last second to unbuckle his seat belt. He sat for a moment with his head against the door, breathing heavily around the lump in his throat, his feet on some unknown land hours and miles away from his family and his pack. The air here was crisp, cool and clean. It smelled of vegetation and heat and dry dirt, of long still nights and wide open skies.

"Hey, sweetie, good to see you’re up." Kate walked up to him, all thousand-Watt smile and loose easy gait, motel keys swinging in her hand.

Derek leapt to his feet and instantly clung to the door, his head swimming. Kate grabbed on to his shoulder. “Woah, hey, baby steps,” she cooed. “Give yourself a moment.”

Derek took a breath, steadied himself, and nodded. “I’m okay,” he said.

"You," said Kate, releasing his shoulder and heading towards the trunk, "are a terrible liar."

Derek watched her pull out a duffel bag, thinking about the first and only time Kate ever lied to him. It’s strange, now that he thinks about. People lie all the time, but Kate never did.

_I know._

_It’s too late._

Maybe she was always lying.


	5. Between Epiphany and Epitaph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smoke clears and Derek sees things clearly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 
>     And then the second boot falls.
>                          And then a third, a fourth, a fifth.
> 
> \- Richard Siken, _Boot Theory by Richard Siken_

They caught the late night news about the fire. It was Kate’s idea, considering Derek wasn’t doing much of anything. The wolfsbane side-effects must have worn off by now, but then keeping a werewolf under wasn’t an exact science. Kate sat cross-legged on the single bed with the control remote in her lap, the knife strapped to her ankle digging in uncomfortably. 

She chewed on beef jerky and watched Derek. He was sitting hunched over in the arm chair holding a plastic cup of water, head down. He had stopped watching the screen once they started showing images of the fire. Kate could swear she had heard a high-pitched whine when the burnt husk of the house first came on. 

Now the only sound in the grimy motel room was the crackle of plastic as she broke into another pack of jerky and the newscasters’ drone. Derek watched the floor and she watched him, was waiting for the little furrow to show up on his brow, for his mouth to frown, or even for his lips pucker under the pressure of nascent fangs. 

She wasn’t waiting for his grief to wash over him at the words _eight deaths and only one survivor_ or even _teenage daughter and unrelated accident near Beacon Hills High._ (Okay, she _was_ hoping for a little reaction at _missing teenage son wanted for questioning_ but she doubted Derek was even listening at that point.)

No. She was waiting for the shoe to drop in that little werewolf head of his.

"How did you know?"

Kate covered her smile by tearing into her jerky. _Thump_ , she thought. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, chewed, and swallowed. “Know what?”

"About the fire." 

"I saw the smoke," she said, and she knew Derek was listening for the skip in her heartbeat that called out her lie. Problem with that was she was _always_ truthful. Just never completely honest.

"You picked me up from school. You never said why. But you picked me up and that’s when the -" The cup crackled pitifully in his grip. 

Kate almost rolled her eyes. So the shoe hadn’t dropped all the way down yet.

"Think about it, puppy." _You’ll figure it out._ And there it was, the flinch.

The first time Kate ever called Derek by that nickname, he had stared at her, horrified. She had smiled and laughed and made reassuring noises about his masculinity and his age. He convinced himself that that was what she meant. 

The shoe dropped. Smelling of burnt wolfsbane petals, he knew better now.

Derek looked up at her, and yes, there were the dimples on the corners of his lips. “You know what I am.” 

Kate smiled, teeth flashing. They were hunter’s teeth, for all their bluntness.

Then Derek put two and two together, then two more, following the trail to a chorus of falling shoes like a marching band, and Kate was almost proud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from a David Glaser quote.


	6. Make Ships With Volatile Souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where do they stand now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 
>     I wanted to hurt you
>     but the victory is that I could not stomach it.
> 
> \- Richard Sicken, _Snow and Dirty Rain_

She hadn’t meant to change her mind. Wasn’t sure she had. She still smiled at the thought of the fire, at the knowledge of a good plan well-orchestrated, was still immensely satisfied with herself, but the fact was, she was sitting in a motel with her little werewolf.

And wasn’t that the problem.

She did change her mind, if only for an instant, but the others still set the fire without her. She couldn’t stop them, didn’t want to anyway, but she drove to Beacon Hills High with a duffel stuffed with Chris’ clothes along with her own. She sat in the principal’s office with knife on her ankle and wolfsbane in her pocket and lied.

She took her werewolf and ran, drove them out of town before the fire was out. She smiled at the smoke and watched the ambulances rush past them. One of them was for the sister, would have been for both of the teens - _tragic accident at Beacon Hills High_ , that had been her idea too - if only she hadn’t changed her mind.

She didn’t change her mind.

Only the boy had to go and fall in love with her.

So here she was, sitting on a single bed in a motel somewhere in Nevada with Derek - the boy, the werewolf, the easy mark and exquisite fuck - and she didn’t know why.

She was pissed, though. 

She thought she would figure things out, that the pieces would fall together as she drove, that she would pull over somewhere out in the desert and - What? Kiss him? Kill him? Both? Leave him by the side of the road or turn both of them back around? Instead she just kept feeding the cigarette burner and checking Derek’s pulse, putting mile after mile between them and what she let happen, what she made happen, what she had wanted to happen and now couldn’t say.

So she tore at her food like she was the wolf instead of Derek, and was angry. Angry at the arsonists for carrying through and angry at herself for not. Angry at Derek for being so malleable, hating the way he had fallen apart under her, the way she had twisted him around her finger. 

She hated that she had burned her bridges along with Derek’s home. She couldn’t go back to Beacon Hills, couldn’t let Derek go either. Chris would find her, would catch up with her eventually, might not even suspect her, but he would have to come to her, and she wasn’t going to stop moving, not for a while. 

Kate stood up and walked to Derek, ran her fingers through his hair like she always did, then pulled. His fangs were out and the edges of his irises were starting to glow. She leaned down close until they were sharing breath and smiled, because the boy still loved her but the wolf wanted to go for the throat. Kate couldn’t decide which made her happier. 

The job was done and the world was hers for the taking, hers to burn, one bridge at a time. She was the alpha bitch with the omega orphan danging off her finger. 

She kissed him hard and he tasted bitter, wolfsbane ash and grief and the barest hint of hatred she could fan to life or smother. Decisions played on her tongue and she changed her mind, didn’t change her mind, kissed him soft, felt his fangs turn to teeth and then she was doing the biting.

She went for the throat.

"Let’s go to New York."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from _The Mirror of the Sea_ by Joseph Conrad.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Bloodsport” by the Sneaker Pimps.


End file.
